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If you’re looking for a Chromebook for school or work, one of Engadget’s favorites is on sale right now. Amazon and Best Buy have discounted the Samsung Galaxy Chromebook 2. After a 29 percent discount, the “fiesta red” Core i3-10110U model is currently $499, down from $700. That’s the lowest-ever price Engadget has seen for the Galaxy Chromebook 2. Best of all, the discount applies to the model that is the best value for most people.

Engadget’s Nathan Ingraham gave the Galaxy Chromebook 2 a score of 82 in 2021. After the original Galaxy Chromebook scored poorly due to middling battery life, Samsung made some dramatic changes for the follow-up model. The 2021 version features a 1080p QLED panel that is one of the best displays you’ll find on a Chrome OS device. The screen is vibrant and bright and features excellent viewing angles. The switch to a Full HD resolution, where the previous model had a 4K display, means the Galaxy Chromebook 2 also offers significantly better battery life. In Engadget’s testing, the laptop consistently went about six to seven hours on a single charge. With 8GB of RAM, the Core i3-10110U model on sale should offer more than enough computing power for most Chrome OS users.

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NVIDIA has begun rolling out a fix for a bug that had caused some of its GPUs to perform worse while people had Discord open. In a tweet spotted by The Verge, the company said Windows will now automatically download an app profile update the next time users log into their PC. The update resolves an issue that prevented some NVIDIA GPUs, including RTX 30 series models like the 3080 and 3060 Ti, from pushing their memory as fast as possible when Discord was open in the background. In some instances, NVIDIA users reported their video cards being throttled by as much as 200Mhz, translating to a modest performance decrease in most games.

Reddit and Linus Tech Tips forum users were among the first to spot and document the issue. The bug was introduced in a recent Discord update that added AV1 codec support. With the new codec, RTX 40 series users can stream their gameplay at up to 4K and 60 frames per second over Discord Nitro. The bug did not appear to affect RTX 40 series cards. That said, NVIDIA quickly acknowledged the issue and offered a temporary workaround. 

 

The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) has blocked Wikipedia after slowing access to the website for 48 hours over content it considers “sacrilegious.” A PTA spokesperson told Bloomberg that the agency has blocked the online encyclopedia for failing to remove said content within the past couple of days. 

The telecom authority revealed on February 1st that it approached the website with a court order to remove “blasphemous” material from its website. After Wikipedia didn’t comply or appear before authorities, the PTA degraded access to the website for a couple of days and threatened to block it entirely if it didn’t comply with its demands. The agency didn’t publicly list the Wikipedia entries it doesn’t want people in Pakistan to see.

As TechCrunch notes, Pakistan has been trying to exert more control over content found on various digital platforms. In 2020, the PTA temporarily banned TikTok due to “immoral and indecent” material before the short-form video app promised to moderate clips according to Pakistani “societal norms” and laws. It’s worth noting that the Muslim-majority country has stringent blasphemy laws, and the punishment for breaking them includes life imprisonment and even death. 

In a blog post, the Wikimedia Foundation confirmed that Pakistan blocked Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects based on its internal traffic reports. “In Pakistan, English Wikipedia receives more than 50 million pageviews per month, followed by Urdu and Russian Wikipedias. There is also a sizable and engaged community of editors in Pakistan that contribute historical and educational content. A block of Wikipedia in Pakistan denies the fifth most populous nation in the world access to the largest free knowledge repository. If it continues, it will also deprive everyone access to Pakistan’s knowledge, history, and culture,” the Foundation wrote. It’s now calling on Pakistan’s authorities to restore access to the Wikipedia website in the country. 

PTA’s spokesperson told Bloomberg that the agency is still in talks with Wikipedia officials and that the agency will consider unblocking the website if it completely removes sacrilegious content.

 

Scientists and roboticists have long looked at nature for inspiration to develop new features for machines. In this case, researchers from the University of Toronto were inspired by bats and other animals that rely on echolocation to design a method that would give small robots that ability to navigate themselves — one that doesn’t need expensive hardware or components too large or too heavy for tiny machines. In fact, according to PopSci, the team only used the integrated audio hardware of an interactive puck robot and built an audio extension deck using cheap mic and speakers for a tiny flying drone that can fit in the palm of your hand. 

The system works just like bat echolocation. It was designed to emit sounds across frequencies, which a robot’s microphone then picks up as they bounce off walls. An algorithm that team created then goes to work to analyze sound waves and create a map with the room’s dimensions. 

In the researchers’ paper published in IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters, they said existing “algorithms for active echolocation are less developed and often rely on hardware requirements that are out of reach for small robots.” The researchers also said their “method is model-based, runs in real time and requires no prior calibration or training.” Their solution could give small machines the capability to be sent on search-and-rescue missions or to previously uncharted locations that bigger robots wouldn’t be able to reach. And since the system only needs onboard audio equipment or cheap additional hardware, it has a wide range of potential applications.

The researchers found during their tests that their technique is still not quite as accurate as systems that use bigger and more expensive hardware, such as GPS sensors or cameras. They’re hoping to improve its accuracy in future versions, though, and to eliminate the need for the system to generate sounds. Instead, they want their system to be able to echolocate using the sounds the drone itself produces, such as the whirl of its own propellers. 

 

Elon Musk is off the hook for his 2018 tweets claiming he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private for $420 a share. A jury found that Musk was not liable for Tesla investors’ losses, following a weeks-long trial in San Francisco.

The verdict is a major victory for Musk, who could have been liable for billions of dollars in damages. Musk had testified in federal court that just because he tweets something, it “does not mean people believe it or will act accordingly.” He also argued that he could have used his shares of SpaceX to fund the deal.

Developing…

 

Scientists will soon have a spaceborne tool to study environmental changes at a very high resolution, and you won’t have long to wait to learn more about it. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is holding a question and answer session today (February 3rd) at 5PM Eastern to discuss NISAR (NASA-ISRO SAR), an Earth-mapping satellite built in tandem with the Indian Space Research Organization. It’s not launching from India until early 2024 and is planned to operate for three years, but it includes breakthrough tech that could help understand Earth and cope with natural disasters. 

NISAR is the first radar imaging satellite to use dual frequencies (the L and S microwave bands). This will let it systematically map the Earth’s crust at an exceptional level of detail — it can detect changes under 1cm (0.4in) across. That will let NISAR observe even subtle nuances of earthquakes, tsunamis and other disasters. It will also help monitor long-term processes, including the crust’s evolution, ecosystem disruptions and ice sheet collapses.

Access to data will also play an important role. NISAR offers worldwide coverage every 12 days, making time-based imagery more practical. The mission team hopes to make data readily available to the public in one to two days, but can deliver that data within hours in an emergency. Anyone willing to parse the information can make use of it.

With an estimated $1.5 billion price, NISAR is expected to be the most expensive Earth imaging satellite to date. The investment may be worthwhile, though. The satellite’s data could help governments react to and prepare for natural disasters, and improve humanity’s understandings of climate change and threats to food security.

 

Ever wish you could play an arcade rhythm game that fostered creativity, not just matching notes? You now have your chance. Endlesss has turned its remote music collaboration software into an honest-to-goodness arcade machine, complete with joysticks, a touchscreen, an XY controller and a sea of buttons. You can use it as a stand-up audio workstation with your own plugins and physical instruments, but it comes into its own in an arcade mode that challenges you to compose beats — you might have to loop drums, for example.

The cabinet is ultimately a community effort. Endlesss Discord member NJ Lang liked the idea of an arcade rig so much that he built one, and it proved a hit when the company took it to events. The firm then built a production prototype, and had a strong-enough initial reception that NBA veteran Baron Davis became the first to buy one — you can see his reaction (and an Endlesss sales pitch) below.

This won’t be a trivial purchase. In fact, it’ll make many retro cabinets seem affordable. Endlesss is releasing 25 Launch Edition arcade systems in late February for a $9,999 “introductory” price. You’ll need to put down a $200 non-refundable deposit just to get into a pre-sale ahead of the public debut. You’re buying this because you have an artistic side and plenty of money to spare — everyone else will want to save those funds for essential music creation tools.

 

Researchers at the University of Adelaide announced this week that they made clean hydrogen fuel from seawater without pre-treatment. Demand for hydrogen fuel, a clean energy source that only produces water when burned, is expected to increase in the coming years as the world (hopefully) continues to pivot away from fossil fuels. The findings could eventually provide cheaper green energy production to coastal areas.

“We have split natural seawater into oxygen and hydrogen with nearly 100 per cent efficiency, to produce green hydrogen by electrolysis, using a non-precious and cheap catalyst in a commercial electrolyser,” said Professor Shizhang Qiao, the team’s co-lead. Seawater typically needs to be purified before electrolysis splits it into hydrogen and oxygen. The team says its results, using cobalt oxide with chromium oxide on its surface as the catalyst, had similar performance to a standard process of applying platinum and iridium catalysts to highly purified and deionized water.

Compared to freshwater, seawater is an abundant resource, and the ability to extract hydrogen fuel from seawater without pre-treatment could save money. However, even if successfully scaled, it would likely only be practical for coastal communities with plenty of seawater — not so much for Iowa or Kansas.

The team’s next step is to scale the system with a larger electrolyzer. Then, although it’s still early in development, the researchers hope to eventually apply the findings to commercial hydrogen production for fuel cells and ammonia synthesis. Co-lead Yao Zheng summarized, “Our work provides a solution to directly utilise seawater without pre-treatment systems and alkali addition, which shows similar performance as that of existing metal-based mature pure water electrolyser.”

 

It’s a rough time for fans of several live service games, which are titles designed to be constantly updated for a long time. A bunch are shutting down in the near future, and CrossfireX and Knockout City are among the latest to join the list.

CrossfireX is an Xbox console version of the massively popular tactical shooter Crossfire. After some delays, it arrived less than a year ago, but it wasn’t a hit with critics or, more crucially, the public. Developer Smilegate has stopped selling the game (the multiplayer component is free-to-play, but the Remedy-developed single-player campaign is not) and is offering refunds for purchases made in the last two weeks. It will shut off the CrossfireX servers on May 18th.

Knockout City, meanwhile, is a fun dodgeball brawler that debuted in 2021. The game went free-to-play last year when developer Velan Studios parted ways with EA to self-publish it. Alas, Knockout City is shutting down too. Its ninth season will be the final one and the servers will close on June 6th. On a positive note, Velan will roll out an option for PC players to run the game on private servers.

Smilegate and Velan are far from alone in closing down live service games recently. Meta’s Ready At Dawn studio said this week it would shutter Echo VR, a zero-gravity frisbee title previously known as Echo Arena, on August 1st. It also emerged over the last week or so that Apex Legends Mobile, Battlefield Mobile, Rumbleverse, Crayta and others are closing shop. Development is ending on Back 4 Blood and Marvel’s Avengers as well, but Turtle Rock Studios and Crystal Dynamics will keep the respective servers online. 

It’s tough to make a game that’s successful, let alone one that requires players to stick with it for the long haul. Major players like Fortnite, Apex Legends (the console and PC version), Valorant, Overwatch 2 and Genshin Impact aren’t going anywhere anytime soon. But developers are all competing with each other and anything else that can soak up peoples’ attention. Even though there are more than 3 billion gamers, there are only so many live service games that the market can sustain.

 

Twitter Blue subscribers will receive a cut of revenue from ads that appear in their reply threads, CEO Elon Musk said. The new program starts today, Musk noted, but he hasn’t yet provided additional details about how it works. The Twitter Blue support page doesn’t include any information either. Twitter no longer has a comms department that can be reached for comment.

Blue subscribers in some territories already see half as many ads on their timeline as other users. Offering a cut of ad revenue could help Twitter keep users on board, especially if it offers them a reasonable split that could earn them some decent scratch for a viral tweet. Many other platforms already offer creators a share of ad revenue, including YouTube, TikTok, Twitch, Instagram and Facebook.

Twitter Blue subscribers currently pay $8 ($11 if they sign up on iOS) per month, or $84 per year for the service. In return, they receive several perks, including a blue check, the option to edit tweets and bookmark folders. They also get longer video uploads (which some people have used to post movies) and prominent placement in reply threads when they respond to someone.

The company is trying to improve its bottom line to, among other things, ensure it can meet interest payments of over $1 billion per year on the loans Musk took out to buy the company. Finding more ways to maximize engagement (and in turn revenue) is key. So incentivizing users, especially those with large audiences, to subscribe to Blue and tweet more often by offering them a revenue share is a logical step. Twitter is also said to be working on another tipping feature using an in-app currency.

Meanwhile, Twitter is reportedlycharging businesses $1,000 per month to have a gold checkmark. Verification for affiliated accounts seemingly costs $50 per month.